Let me fucking ask you something. What's more slow, unresponsive, and costly for any large company:
1. A single, unified intranet with various services and uniform oversight.
2. A patchwork of outsourced-to-the-lowest-bidder Daily-WTF worthy enterprisy "commerical" websites for every separate service (HR, Payroll, Benefits, travel, documents, petty cash etc. etc.). Because that's my reality in the system. Uniform interface? Uniform security policy? Uniform uptime? Try three-times daily outage notices from one-system-or-other, weekly password resets (every one with different rules), piss-poor interface design, etc.
It's not about size-of-government or any other libertarian bullshit fantasy; even a government shrunk by 90% would still need these services. It's the constant drive to privatize these functions driven by the "ooh, the private market is magic and never does anything wrong" mantra that leads to this ugly, wasteful, and inefficient patchwork. Inefficient government? No, it's a government that only gets exactly what this idiot-driven free-market religion allows it to pay for.
Alternative IF NBC wrote the script and the government found it to be accurate(*), then fine.
No, maybe not fine.
Fine is: Government wants to produce a message. Government writes the message. Government puts production services out for bid, NBC is best by fair assessment (not just on price but possibly quality services). Video is made.
NOT fine is: Message is essentially a corporate message from NBC following NBC interests, so they give/donate/underbid their services in such a way that their corporate message is being sent and endorsed using the government as a mouthpiece.
So why didn't you donate them to your local public library instead?
You can also donate them to individual classrooms, I know many teachers who happily accept books for their in-class reading without these sorts of hoops.
Yeah. "Entitlement" programs like, you know, decent education. That weird thing that brought us Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon, Adobe, etc. that actually let us, you know, hard-earn our cash?
Or should the last one here just turn out the lights again?
My own favorite case of proving non-obviousness to myself...
Old mathematics joke: A famous mathematician was lecturing in class: "It is obvious that X..." He paused, stared at the board in silence for a minute, then walked out of the room without a word. The students looked at each other and shrugged. Twenty minutes later he walked back into the class: "It is now obvious that X..."
Some of the most inept people I know are serious chess players. How many of them do you know? They spend all their time studying chess, when they could have spent their time learning something useful.
Exactly. My father grew up in that neck of the woods. Basically, every male he knew wasted college/early 20s sitting in Cafes playing chess. It was his generation's WoW. He was a dammed good player, but one thing he told me, many times, was that he regretted the hours of his life wasted on chess. Of course, that was *after* he'd taught me the game...
As someone who went to Mudd 20-cough years ago, I've found it works well, when seeking employment, as the best school no-one's heard of. Sure everyone and their dog knows MIT and Caltech, but if your interviewer knows Mudd, it's a good sign of a with-it interviewer and a truly tech- (or engineereing- or science-) savvy, non-WTF company.
Their self-deprecation pretty much fits this image; underneath it they absolutely know they're elite.
Um, despite the "worry over net neutrality" cited in the article, the actual service just looks like they're repackaging a higher speed/business connection as a "gamer" package. Nothing there actually says that your connection will be slower by packet category.
How is this situation different from any other so called "talent" contest?
If the organizer recorded your performance in the talent contest, then made a #1 single out of it without paying you, that's the problem. Not that it's not wholly legal if the participants agree beforehand to sign away their performance, but it could be a scummy business practice and worth looking out for. Which is all the article is saying, really.
On the other hand, if your performance brought you fame (or in computing, a bright spot on your resume) that might be a reasonable exchange.
Google "R language", or "R code", or something similar. It's search engine searching 101.
Thank you very much for your extremely useful skills. I never would have guessed! If you think I haven't tried dozens of permutations of same and not constantly come up with hits based on stray letter 'R's, well... you haven't really done anything challenging with a search engine before. (I'm not talking about cases where you're trying to just get basic facts about R, but when you want to look up some arcane error messages etc. that the stray R's doom many searches).
So what? Sometimes, flaws with the data are found; sometimes, the researchers overlook things.
And sometimes, a well-funded opponent who finds results politically inconvenient can paralyze the process by demanding the data constantly be defended against frivolous "challenges" and nonexistent "flaws".
I predicted 3 of the 4 teams in the semi-finals. And I am not claiming any special powers here.
Given the number of people reading the comments, odds are that someone would be able to say they predicted 3 of 4. It just happened to be you this time.
Slashdot Mirror
1. A single, unified intranet with various services and uniform oversight.
2. A patchwork of outsourced-to-the-lowest-bidder Daily-WTF worthy enterprisy "commerical" websites for every separate service (HR, Payroll, Benefits, travel, documents, petty cash etc. etc.). Because that's my reality in the system. Uniform interface? Uniform security policy? Uniform uptime? Try three-times daily outage notices from one-system-or-other, weekly password resets (every one with different rules), piss-poor interface design, etc.
It's not about size-of-government or any other libertarian bullshit fantasy; even a government shrunk by 90% would still need these services. It's the constant drive to privatize these functions driven by the "ooh, the private market is magic and never does anything wrong" mantra that leads to this ugly, wasteful, and inefficient patchwork. Inefficient government? No, it's a government that only gets exactly what this idiot-driven free-market religion allows it to pay for.
Alternative IF NBC wrote the script and the government found it to be accurate(*), then fine.
No, maybe not fine.
Fine is: Government wants to produce a message. Government writes the message. Government puts production services out for bid, NBC is best by fair assessment (not just on price but possibly quality services). Video is made.
NOT fine is: Message is essentially a corporate message from NBC following NBC interests, so they give/donate/underbid their services in such a way that their corporate message is being sent and endorsed using the government as a mouthpiece.
How many locks have you seen made of wood?
Ones that float.
So why didn't you donate them to your local public library instead?
You can also donate them to individual classrooms, I know many teachers who happily accept books for their in-class reading without these sorts of hoops.
Or should the last one here just turn out the lights again?
My own favorite case of proving non-obviousness to myself...
Old mathematics joke: A famous mathematician was lecturing in class: "It is obvious that X..." He paused, stared at the board in silence for a minute, then walked out of the room without a word. The students looked at each other and shrugged. Twenty minutes later he walked back into the class: "It is now obvious that X..."
specs can change dramatically in most cases
Moreover, the very act of scientific progress is questioning and experimenting with the assumptions in the spec.
Some of the most inept people I know are serious chess players. How many of them do you know? They spend all their time studying chess, when they could have spent their time learning something useful.
Exactly. My father grew up in that neck of the woods. Basically, every male he knew wasted college/early 20s sitting in Cafes playing chess. It was his generation's WoW. He was a dammed good player, but one thing he told me, many times, was that he regretted the hours of his life wasted on chess. Of course, that was *after* he'd taught me the game...
In Dr. Who fandom it's commonly said: "You never forget your first Doctor."
You mean your first companion, if you're 13 and the companion is Leela.
The Constitution grants Congress specific powers.
Devil's advocate: those do in fact include copyright.
If "nought" isn't the same as "nothing", then what did this ship dread?
The Pirate Roberts?
As someone who went to Mudd 20-cough years ago, I've found it works well, when seeking employment, as the best school no-one's heard of. Sure everyone and their dog knows MIT and Caltech, but if your interviewer knows Mudd, it's a good sign of a with-it interviewer and a truly tech- (or engineereing- or science-) savvy, non-WTF company. Their self-deprecation pretty much fits this image; underneath it they absolutely know they're elite.
I was working in the lab once [...] didn't have a hair dryer, but we did have a heat gun...
Why was I hoping that story would end very differently?
their sources tended to be more things like OS-related blogs back then...
I think this is the real point. Why bother to post a news story that every wire service (and thus google news etc.) has aggregated faster?
On the other hand, FLYING CARS!
Isn't Popular Mechanics art what started the whole flying car thing in the first place?
Um, despite the "worry over net neutrality" cited in the article, the actual service just looks like they're repackaging a higher speed/business connection as a "gamer" package. Nothing there actually says that your connection will be slower by packet category.
How is this situation different from any other so called "talent" contest?
If the organizer recorded your performance in the talent contest, then made a #1 single out of it without paying you, that's the problem. Not that it's not wholly legal if the participants agree beforehand to sign away their performance, but it could be a scummy business practice and worth looking out for. Which is all the article is saying, really.
On the other hand, if your performance brought you fame (or in computing, a bright spot on your resume) that might be a reasonable exchange.
the Internet as being just like a sewer system, which is not at all correct.
That depends, are you talking delivery system or content?
Car analogy alert: Why should a non-mechanic driver learn the basics of internal combustion and what the spark plug thingie does?
Agreed, I didn't know about that one!
Google "R language", or "R code", or something similar. It's search engine searching 101.
Thank you very much for your extremely useful skills. I never would have guessed! If you think I haven't tried dozens of permutations of same and not constantly come up with hits based on stray letter 'R's, well... you haven't really done anything challenging with a search engine before. (I'm not talking about cases where you're trying to just get basic facts about R, but when you want to look up some arcane error messages etc. that the stray R's doom many searches).
therefore any derivative work that uses the letter R...
Yeah, you think this is funny until you try to google any particular bit of specific info on 'R'.
And don't get me started on looking up using 'R' with 'c'. (actually, that one works much better than it used to).
So what? Sometimes, flaws with the data are found; sometimes, the researchers overlook things.
And sometimes, a well-funded opponent who finds results politically inconvenient can paralyze the process by demanding the data constantly be defended against frivolous "challenges" and nonexistent "flaws".
I predicted 3 of the 4 teams in the semi-finals. And I am not claiming any special powers here.
Given the number of people reading the comments, odds are that someone would be able to say they predicted 3 of 4. It just happened to be you this time.
Some of the best studied ones do seem to be human caused.
That's because the best-studied ones are the ones we either eat or compete with.